Isabella

• isabella as the hero - poem is named after her and she loses the love that makes her 'tread upon the air' and 'dies forlorn/ imploring for her basil to the last'

  isabella as a villain/femme fatale - luring the otherwise happy and prestigious men to their fates (is lorenzo really prestigious?)

  brothers as villains

  lorenzo as victim


  interpretations that can be taken
• Honeyless days and days did he let pass-

  Narrator blames Lorenzo for not visiting Isabella. Sad tone. stanza 4

  
• fair Isabel, poor sweet Isabel!'

  Her tragic status as a victim, the tragic inevitability of her fate, 'poor' can be interpreted as foreshadowing of the poems trajectory.

  
• Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!

  Oxymoronic-He wants to speak and express how wildly in love with her he is but can't because he is scared

  stanza. Foreshadows tragic end. 6

  
• bower of hyacinth and musk'

  They meet in a bed of flowers, relationship develops into something physical. this place can be used as an example of the sublime beautiful world of dreams and pastoral idyll, contrasted with the quotidian world often foreshadowing death

  
• know there is richest juice in poison-flowers'

  Foreshadowing of what is to come within the poem. In the most fruitful love can come the most horrifying dangers.

  
• enriched from ancestral merchandise'


  Her family are wealthy and noble, Lorenzo is clearly of another class and at the time it was law that people must marry within their status quo.

  
• blood from stinging whip with hollow eyes'

  The tragic status of her brothers is being set up, they are portrayed as villainous, their wealth is 'red l'nd' this greed, and misuse of their power is villainous. they believe in class divide as it benefits them.

  
• men of cruel clay'

  George Bernard Shaw called these 'capitalistic stanzas' that make them an 'prophetic Marxist commentary' men of cruel clay implies they are shaped by their society, they become blameless as they were responding to societies pressures.

  
• All close they met again, before the dusk/ Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,/ All close they met, all eves, before the dusk/ Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

  Repetition shows their love growing deeper as time passes. stanza 11

  
• With every morn their love grew tenderer,

  Romantic mood. stanza 2

  
• Why were they proud?

  Repetition shows narrator/Keats' views on the brothers. It's repeated 4 times in the stanza, builds tension and shows them getting angry at the brothers. stanza 16
• marble founts/ Gushed with pride


  brothers are proud

  
• For they resolved in some forest dim/ To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him.

  The brothers will murder lorenzon

  
• he saw her features bright/ Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight.

  Lovers see each other which evokes pity as reader knows what is about to happen. Visual imagery, doomed love.

  
• two brothers and their murdered man


  Fate that Lorenzo will die, it's set in stone as the narrator refers to him a..

  loss of identity.

  
• Sick and wan/ The brothers' faces in the ford did seem,/ Lorenzo's flush with love.


  Contrast of skin-Brothers are cold-hearted and unfeeling. They're sick with murder wheras Lorenzo is lovesick. Stanza 27

  
• There in that forest did his great love cease.


  Tragic-His true love dies with him in the forest. Stanza 28

  
• It aches in loneliness-is ill at peace


  Even in death, Lorenzo's love causes his soul pain. Stanza 28

  
• The breath of Winter comes from far away,

  Keats uses pathetic fallacy to reflect the mood and atmosphere surrounding Isabella after Lorenzo leaves. Also personification??? Stanza 32

  
• So sweet Isabel/ By gradual decay from beauty fell,

  Isabella is lonely and is dying. Pity. Stanza 32 contrasts with previous 'sweet isabel' quote

  
• And every night in dreams they groaned aloud,/ To see their sister in her snowy shroud.


  Brothers are starting to feel guilty and implication she is dying as she is described as wearing something a corpse wears. Stanza 33

  
• Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling/ Alone.

  Form-Doesn't fit Iambic Pentameter, showing things aren't right and this is a turning point as Isabella is learning the truth. Stanza 39

  
• I thought the worst was simple misery;

  Sweet Spirit, thou hast schooled my infancy:

  Sibillance creates soft sound.


  Isabella realises how innocent she is. Stanza 42

  
• She gazed into the fresh-thrown mould, as though/ One glance did fully all its secrets tell;

  Isabella and Lorenzo's bond is shown through Isabella instinctively looking at Lorenzo's 'grave'. She immediately understands. Stanza 46

  
• Sweet basil, which her tears kept ever wet.

  Isabella's sadness is emphasised when her tears are enough to water the basil. Stanza 52

  
• And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,


  Stanza 53 repeats the word "forgot" to demonstrate Isabella being consumed by death and grief. Stanza 53

  
• For simple Isabel is soon to be/ Among the dead. She withers, like a palm/ Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.


  Foreshadowing Isabella's death and simile. Stanza 56

  
• And when she left, she hurried back, as swift/ As a bird on wing to breast it's eggs again;


  Silmile-Mothering nature show how protective she is over the pot, reminder she will never have children. Stanza 59

  
• filling it once more with human soul'


  by digging up lorenzo she is restoring his identity, she is finding his 'funeral stole' body

  
• she died forlorn,/ Imploring for her basil to the last.


  Isabella dies. Stanza 63

  
• with blood upon their heads, to banishment'


  the self imposed banishment the brothers seclude themselves to can present their guilt and ownership of a moral conscious, and there villainous status to the reader can be seen merged with one of a victim, as the brothers know suffer horribly for an action they thought would be beneficial.